Thursday, January 10, 2008

Milk Ice Cream

With the weather going over 40°C (104°F) for the next two days it seems the perfect time to indulge in one of my absolute favourite ice creams and it comes from this equally fabulous book

Giorgio Locatelli's Made In Italy.

After the great disappointment of the English translation of The Silver Spoon, it was this book that renewed my spirits. It also resulted in two other thing - I finally got myself that gelateria I'd coveted and I finally made the ice cream of my dreams - milk ice cream.

What I especially liked about this recipe is that there are no eggs but the end product is still so creamy. There is a purity to the flavour, an intense milk taste that almost seems to "out vanilla" vanilla ice cream.

With milk being the major focus I thought I should use an extra special milk. I chose the Elgaar Farm Organic Un-homogenised Whole Milk.

Sold in these great glass bottles I just love looking at the inches of cream welling up in the neck of the bottle, it does seem a shame to have to shake it all up. To keep it in the family, there's also some of their Organic Table Cream in the mix as well.

Milk Ice Cream

565 grams whole milk

170 grams cream

40 grams milk powder

135 grams dextrose

50 grams caster sugar

25 grams invert sugar

5 grams ice cream stabiliser (optional)

If you can't find invert sugar all you will need to do is add up the total amount of sugar in the recipe and then use it in the proportion of one-third dextrose and two-thirds caster sugar. In this recipe you would use 70 grams dextrose and 140 grams caster sugar.

Whisk the milk, cream, milk powder and dextrose until smooth and place it in a pan over a gentle heat until it reaches 40°C.

Add the caster sugar and stabiliser (if using) and whisk until dissolved and then cook until it reaches 85°C.

Remove it from the heat and cool down as quickly as possible before placing in the fridge to rest for 6-12 hours. It's important that the mix is very cold before being placed in the ice-cream maker.

Follow the instructions on your ice-cream maker and churn until thickened. This took about 45 minutes.

Pour out into a container, seal and store in the freezer to set.

I'm not sure what could be nicer than a generous scoop of milk ice cream atop home made fruit salad on a horribly hot day.

I'm coveting your gelato maker haha.This post reminds me of when I was a little girl and the milkman would deliver house to house and put the milk in a box outside the front door. There was always that inch or two of wonderful cream on top that made the cats in the neighborhood go crazy. It IS a shame you had to shake the bottle.Your site is lovely, btw :)

oh, this makes me want to cry it is so beautiful!!!!I love milk ice cream. I have this dream of opening a milk bar and serving all sorts of fresh milk and milk-based drinks and food. Strange, but still, my favorite.